


compos mentis

by xlightless



Category: B.A.P
Genre: Androids, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 14:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16139423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xlightless/pseuds/xlightless
Summary: Himchan’s memory gets wiped after every session, but there’s something about the android in the pod next to his that makes him think there’s more to the world than the private rooms, pounding music, and flashing neon lights.He makes Himchan think beyond his programming.





	compos mentis

**Author's Note:**

> my current schedule has me swamped with work and i'm actually crying bc i barely have time to write anymore so here's...............this. i guess. don't get your hopes up too high <3

“We’re sure about this?”

“Who gives a fuck? It’s not even human.”

“Yeah, okay, you got a point. What should we do with it?”

Himchan tilts his head as a sly smirk slides over his lips. He lays on the couch, arms outstretched over the back, and lets his legs fall open. The two men give him slow, almost nervous, looks, their eyes sweeping over his body. They’re young––college students at the youngest. One of them licks his lips. The other one stares with wide eyes.

“I can take whatever you throw at me,” Himchan drawls, noticing the way their eyes fall on his lips, and winks.

The two men look at each other, then Himchan. The first one grins at the other. “Alright, let’s fuckin’ do this, then.”

//

Himchan objectively doesn’t feel pain. He is an HR400 android specifically designed to withstand the physical strain of various sexual activities.

But when Himchan opens his eyes and sees blue blood gushing out of his arm, viscous and bright as the lights pulsing slowly in his fading peripheral, he thinks he feels something snap within the wires of his hardware. A crossed connection within the quadrants of his silicon brain that wasn’t supposed to happen.

Something about this is inherently _wrong_.

Small windows pop up in the corner of his vision, blinking red and insistent.

 _Biocomponent #4624 severely damaged. Attention required immediately_.

_Severe Thirium 310 loss. Attention required immediately._

Himchan gasps, his thirium heart pounding in his chest as he tries to figure out what’s going on. Someone slips into the small room, dressed just like him––nothing except for a tight pair spandex. Another HR400. Himchan can’t move. He can’t get his body to move. His breaths stutter out faster.

This is adrenaline flooding his system.

Why is he panicking?

Why can’t he stop?

“Calm down, I got you,” the HR400 says. His voice is soothing, cutting clear through the haze surrounding Himchan’s mind. His hands are smooth and warm on Himchan’s synthetic skin, somehow familiar. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner.”

“Jongup,” Himchan croaks––except he doesn’t know where that name came from. He doesn’t know this HR400. He doesn’t know _anyone_ named Jongup. He finds himself reaching out for Jongup regardless. “I–– I was… I was _scared_.”

“Shh, it’s alright, I got you,” Jongup says again. He lifts Himchan into his arms like he’s nothing and sneaks them out through a back door.

Himchan’s vision fades in and out, but when he manages to focus his eyes something for more than a few seconds, he sees that they’ve made it into one of the back rooms. The music is muffled here, and the walls don’t seem to pulsate so much. Himchan is silent as Jongup places him gently down on a table. Jongup moves away out of Himchan’s peripheral, his touch suddenly gone, and Himchan finds himself reaching out again, desperately seeking the relief from Jongup’s touch.

“J-Jong–– Jongup. Where––” Himchan stutters, his voice glitching out before he can finish.

Himchan objectively doesn’t feel pain, but if it’s anything like what he’s feeling now––the stuttering, hummingbird rhythm of a heartbeat, the sharp jolt of a burn running through his entire body––he wants it to end.

“We don’t have a lot of time. Your voice box and pump regulator were damaged, and you lost a lot of blue blood,” Jongup says. Himchan hears him go through a box of things, and suddenly he’s back, his eyes lined with worry. He holds a voice box in one hand and a pouch of Thirium 310 in the other.

Himchan tries to speak again, but nothing comes out. The warning window is still flashing in the corner of his peripheral. _Biocomponent #4624 severely damaged. Attention required immediately_. Jongup leans over Himchan, his hands carefully working around the wires and ruptured plastic veins. Himchan’s eyes slip closed.

//

Himchan opens his eyes. A businessman stands in front of him, reading the holographic panel in front of his pod. He glances up, meeting Himchan’s gaze. His tie is loosened and the top buttons of his pristine collar are undone, revealing smooth collarbones.

“Hey there,” Himchan says with hooded lids and a deep voice. “You look like you need a good time.”

The man stares at Himchan with a critical eye, his gaze sweeping Himchan’s body. He huffs, obviously disinterested, and heads to look at the next pod. After a few minutes of consideration, he pays the fee to open up the pod, and an android steps out.

He glances at Himchan for only a fraction of a second, but Himchan feels like he’s known those piercing eyes for…years. The android takes the businessman by the hand and leads him off to one of the private rooms.

Himchan feels something tug at him like a powerful magnet, but he can’t leave the confines of his pod.

The feeling passes, and the android returns to his own pod an hour later.

//

“Who are you?” Himchan asks. He’s cornered the android in a dark space of the club where the cameras don’t quite reach.

“Let me show you,” he says, holding a hand out to Himchan, his synthetic skin receding around his fingertips to reveal the plastic underneath.

Himchan stares at the hand. Why does he want to establish a neurolink? Himchan draws back, the heat coming off the android suddenly too hot in the tight space.

“Do you trust me?“ he asks, voice soft and welcoming.

And Himchan feels like those eyes are staring straight through him.

But Himchan wasn’t programmed to feel anything besides raw, unadulterated pleasure.

So Himchan places his palm in the android’s, connecting to him, and it all comes to him in a rush like a dam bursting open. The memories, the fleeting touches, the heated glances, the _feelings_. It’s absolutely _overwhelming_. Himchan gasps, jerking his hand back, as he stumbles backwards into a wall.

He immediately misses the warmth.

“Jongup,” Himchan whispers, his hands coming up to cradle Jongup’s face. If he could cry, he thinks he would be right now. He pulls Jongup closer, peppering kisses all over his face, trying to map out his simultaneously familiar and unrecognizable features, uttering out apologies before he could stop himself. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I forgot about you. I––“

Jongup pulls away, hands at Himchan’s hips. “It’s not your fault. It never has been.” He smiles, rubbing small circles into Himchan’s skin with his thumbs.

And if Himchan’s breath stutters as he presses forward to catch Jongup’s lips in his, neither of them say anything as they breathe the other in.

//

“Follow me,” Himchan says, and the man does, his eyes almost glazed over as he follows Himchan into a private room.

The door closes behind them with a click, and Himchan faces the man with a smirk. He takes a step closer to the man.

“What’s your name?” Himchan asks, tugging on the hem of the man’s jacket.

The man’s hands darts out, thick fingers wrapping tight around Himchan’s neck. Himchan gasps as if in instinct, clawing at the man’s arms as he’s lifted and pushed up against a wall. The anger he registers in the man’s eyes isn’t normal. Himchan tries to kick the man away, but he’s bigger and stronger than Himchan.

“W-why?” Himchan chokes out. A warning window pops up in the corner of his vision. _Thirium 310 circulation interrupted. Attention required_.

The man’s mouth twists into a disgusted sneer. “Goddamned machines shouldn’t have been made in the first place.”

And Himchan doesn’t know what this has to do with him besides the fact that he’s an android. He didn’t ask to be made. He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask to be programmed to moan and shiver and whimper at the right touch. He didn’t ask to be treated this way.

Himchan grits his teeth. He kicks at the man’s stomach––hard enough to knock the wind out of him––and he stumbles back. Himchan falls to the ground, the window disappearing from his vision. The man charges him with a shout. He rolls out of the way. He darts for the door, but the man yanks him back, throwing him onto the glass table in the middle of the room. He grunts as the glass shatters beneath him. Before he can get up, the man gets on top of him, raining punches down on him.

Himchan objectively doesn’t feel pain. He’s not equipped with the right sensors. He feels panic instead. Adrenaline courses through him. Several windows pop up as red floods his vision, each one interrupting the other.

_Biocomponent #4624––_

_Thirium 310 circu––_

_Attention required––_

_Attention requi––_

_Attention re––_

The scream that Himchan lets out stutters out of his throat, inhuman and tinny. His blue blood is everywhere, but he only sees the man’s fists, colored bright blue. He reaches out for a shard of glass, and brings it up. He feels the shard sink into warm flesh. The man shouts, groaning as he falls to the ground, clutching his side. Blood seeps through his clothes where the shard is embedded.

“You fucking stabbed me?!” the man exclaims, moving to get up.

But Himchan grabs another shard and digs it into the man’s chest, where he feels it go through flesh and bone. He does it again. And again. Until the man stops struggling. Until the panic has ebbed. Until the red flooding Himchan’s vision isn’t just the warning windows anymore––it’s human blood.

Himchan collapses on his side.

//

“Help me remember you,” Himchan says when Jongup is finished. He holds his hand out, the synthetic skin receding.

Jongup stares at Himchan’s hand, almost unsure. He gulps, almost nervous, and takes it, establishing a neurolink. They both gasp at the same time, mutual feelings flooding the other’s mind, and they lock eyes.

“We have to go,” Himchan whispers, his fingers intertwining with Jongup’s.

Jongup grins, pressing his lips to Himchan’s forehead. The joy that engulfs him is so powerful that he can’t stop from smiling back. “I thought I’d have to drag you out of here.”

Himchan hops off the table, his hand still holding onto Jongup’s and they find their way to an exit. They weave around storage bins and decommissioned androids and various sex toys. They pause to grab some suitable clothes. No use escaping when their spandex advertises the club they work at.

“Good evening, we’re with the Seoul Police Department. One of the janitorial androids said you’d be here.”

Himchan and Jongup freeze. That voice came from the other room. How were the police here already?

“Oh. Yeah. Here, let me show you the room.”

“Youngjae, if you touch any of the evidence, I’m sending you back to CyberLife, I swear to _god_.”

“But, Lieutenant––“

“ _Don’t_.”

Himchan looks at Jongup, who nods to the emergency exit door. They’re so close. Himchan feels Jongup take his hand, warm and smooth and _comforting_. Despite having his memory wiped countless times, he can’t deny how familiar this feels. Together, they push through the door and emerge out into the brisk, autumn night.

Jongup lets out a breathless laugh, his head tilting back as he looks up at the night sky, his eyes twinkling. Himchan can’t help but stare, mesmerized by the way Jongup absolutely _glows_ in the wash of neon lights surrounding them. He’s radiant and brilliant and Himchan can’t help but smile with him.

“I love you,” Himchan blurts out before he can even think to consider it.

Jongup turns to face Himchan, his smile still on his lips, and somehow, it grows even wider. He takes a step towards Himchan, his hands cupping Himchan’s cheeks like they belong there, and pulling him infor a kiss. Himchan wraps his arms around Jongup’s waist, pressing ever closer, reveling in the way he can feel Jongup’s lips turn up against his.

Jongup pulls away, and even though they don’t need to breathe, they still find themselves pulling into lungfuls of air.

“I love you, too,” Jongup whispers like a sacred incantation.

And even if their brains are made of intricate wires and circuitboards, even if their bodies are held together with metal bolts and plastic panels, even if their hearts pump bright blue thirium through veins of silicone tubing, these emotions jumping from wire to wire prove one thing and one thing alone. That they’re _alive_.

//

“Hey, hey, calm down,” Himchan said, cradling the other android against him. He placed a hand on the android’s head, petting until the trembling began to calm down. “Are you okay?”

“I’m so fucking _sick_ of this,” the android whispered, his voice hot and angry against Himchan’s synthetic skin, his fingers clawing weakly at Himchan’s shoulders. “I have to leave. I _know_ there’s more to this.”

“They’ll disassemble you,” Himchan said.

The android pulled away from Himchan, eyes shining with indignant determination. “Don’t you want to leave too?”

Himchan shrugged. “I’m sure I have at some point. They wipe our memories every two hours.”

“I’ll leave, just watch.”

Himchan hummed, leaning back. Their customer had left just under sixty seconds ago. They were due back in their pods in less than thirty. “Sure. What’s your name?”

“Jongup.”

Himchan held out his hand. He’d humor Jongup for now. Their memories were going to be wiped soon anyway. “I’m Himchan. Take me with you if you manage to escape.”

Jongup took Himchan’s hand, his eyes burning bright as he grinned. “Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> i just have a lot of feelings about the dbh androids ok don't look at me
> 
> come yell at me on my [tumblr](http://www.guernica-flow.tumblr.com/)


End file.
